GeoEye employees are elevating insight to bring you secure, timely, and accurate location information. The company’s staff is comprised of bright and talented individuals with diverse backgrounds who work hard to ensure customer satisfaction. Take a closer look at some of the people who help to make GeoEye great.
Have you ever envisioned opening your own brewpub? Or perhaps you have a passion for modern art or classic cars? If so, Alistair Miller is someone you want to meet! He’s truly a “Renaissance man” which makes him not only a unique and valuable contributor to our team, but also an interesting person to be around.
Alistair discovered his interest in Geography during his undergraduate studies at Mary Washington College (before it was the University of Mary Washington). He was inspired by one of his professors, a human geography researcher, to learn more about the field. Having never before considered this course of study, he was fascinated by the many different elements and opportunities available in the field. He became hooked and went on to major in Geography with a focus on Remote Sensing and Cartography.
After college, Alistair moved back to the Washington, D.C. area, where he grew up. But he quickly found himself looking for opportunities to move out West after he went to visit a friend in Colorado. Within three months of taking the plunge and leaving his home, he was working in Customer Support at DigitalGlobe. After two years he advanced to inside sales and eventually into project and product management.
All of this experience prepared him well for the next chapter in his career. He transitioned to a role with GeoEye, taking the reins on supporting the development of the EyeQ™ platform. This relatively new technology enables customers to quickly and easily catalog and process high-resolution imagery for rapid dissemination. Since its inception almost three years ago, EyeQ has proven invaluable to emergency response and reaction to international events. For example, GeoEye was able to immediately distribute high-quality imagery to the world after the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan last year using the EyeQ system. And since the Japan crisis, EyeQ has enabled access to imagery in a timely manner to respond to numerous other natural disasters worldwide. It is not surprising, then, that Alistair considers EyeQ to be the most rewarding project he has been a part of developing.
Alistair is also managing GeoEye’s Google Maps platform and teaming with GeoEye Analytics to bring to fruition the next generation of their Signature Analyst product. He is constantly seeking innovative ideas and discovering how to apply imagery in meaningful ways. He finds that the best part of his job is having the chance to work cross-functionally and interact with a broad range of employees to help provide the best solution to a problem.
Moving forward, Alistair sees challenge and opportunity in further building the EyeQ customer base and in growing Web development. He continually listens to customer feedback to learn how to meet market demands and improve the capabilities of the EyeQ product. In the next five years, he would like to be involved in transforming web-based products to mobile devices to meet a rising customer demand. He also hopes to move into even more strategic roles where he can make an impact on the long-term company strategies. But if all else fails, his dream of opening a brewpub is always waiting in the wings. Care to join him? To learn more about Alistair, check out this Directions Magazine article: http://www.directionsmag.com/articles/meet-your-colleagues-alistair-miller-geoeye/252948 or drop him a line at Miller.Alistair@geoeye.com.
5 Facts About Alistair:
1) He has the same middle name as his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc. going back to 18th-century England.
2) He plays the drums and guitar. He can “get by” on bass, saxophone, and piano, but says he can’t play a recorder as well as his 2.5 year old!
3) His parents once told him he had won a baseball award when he was 12. He was surprised since the season hadn’t started, but got dressed up for the “ceremony” anyway before realizing that it was April 1st. He eventually got them back!
4) He bartended for 6 years and still has most mixed drinks memorized. He hates making mojitos and anything involving a pestle and mortar.
5) He occasionally races at Summit Point and Virginia International Raceway, and is a Formula 1 fanatic.
